Psalm 38

Down, down, down...

In 1991,

I was a worship leader in a Baptist church. I had undergone a paradigm shift a couple years before, moving from the expectation that the end was upon us to an expectation that Jesus will win the world with his gospel. I had begun to grasp the centrality of the Church, and the importance of singing the word of God together as a congregation, particularly the psalms.

I think that there were two reasons, neither of them all that good, it never occurred to me to seek out a church tradition that sang the psalms, and to borrow from them to teach my people how to sing psalms. First, I was a singer/songwriter. We need to sing psalms? Ok, I had better start writing them. Second, there were no churches in my town that even remotely approximated what I envisioned psalm-singing to look like. I had no teachers, and did not know to seek them out. When I did finally look a few years later, it took quite a long while for me to find a source of psalmnody that did not sound just like the hymns we had recently left behind in our church.

I set my sights on Psalm 38 that year, and puzzled over how to sing a song like this. It was unlike any of the snippets of psalms I had yet written; a whole psalm about being down, sick, and troubled. I opted for a rock beat, something with muscle and rhythm.

I played this tune for a friend of mine who was into the psalms, and he did not like it. It was not fitting to dance in such circumstances, he maintained. I put the song away and pursued other psalms. But here it still was, all these years later, and my fingers and my mind still remembered it, though I have not sung it for 34 years…

The results are below.

Psalm 38 – Down, Down, Down

Oh Lord do not rebuke me in Your wrath

Nor chasten me in Your displeasure

For Your arrows pierce me deeply

And Your hand presses me down

Oh Lord do not rebuke me in Your wrath

Nor chasten me in Your displeasure

For Your arrows pierce me deeply

And Your hand presses me down, down, down.

There is no soundness in my flesh because of Your anger

Nor is there any health in my bones because of my sin

For my iniquities have gone over my head

Like a heavy burden they are too heavy for me, too heavy for me

My wounds are foul and festering because of my foolishness

Oh Lord do not rebuke me in Your wrath

Nor chasten me in Your displeasure

For Your arrows pierce me deeply

And Your hand presses me down, down, down.

I am troubled, I am bowed down greatly, I go mourning all the day long

For my loins are full of inflammation and my body is not sound

I am feeble and severely broken

I groan because of the turmoil of my heart

Lord all my desire is before You, and my sighing is not hidden from You

My heart pants, my strength fails me

As for the light of my eyes, it has also gone from me

Oh Lord do not rebuke me in Your wrath

Nor chasten me in Your displeasure

For Your arrows pierce me deeply

And Your hand presses me down, down, down, down.

Do not forsake me O Lord

O my God, do not be far from me

©Aug.10/1991 Jamie Soles